


home invasion

by seohin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Complete, Dean Winchester-centric, Gen, Leader Sam Winchester, Lonely Dean Winchester, Mary Critical, Sam Critical, Season/Series 13, Season/Series 14, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, i love them both but I’m sorry :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:55:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24611104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seohin/pseuds/seohin
Summary: He’s gotten lazy, with the feeling of having something of his own, and it takes him a moment to remember that, in the end, all that’s reallyhisis Baby and the open road.::or, how the Apocalypse Hunters infiltrated Dean's life and home and took everything away from him. It's not like he can complain, though, right?
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	home invasion

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Eggshells](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16622294) by [hunenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunenka/pseuds/hunenka). 



> Warning in the end notes

Sam doesn’t get it.

It’s not like Dean expects him to, not really, but he’d hoped that Sam would remember Dad, he would remember the Mark of Cain, he would remember that whenever one person calls all the shots everything ends up horribly, horribly wrong.

Still, it’s not like Dean can say anything; if he undermines Sam’s “leadership”, they risk a revolt on their hands, and Sam’s too unstable to talk to by himself. So Dean takes one look at all the fucking _people_ in the bunker, in his house, in his home, and he turns on his heel, goes to his room, and counts to ten because they’re _Sam’s_ guests, they’re not strangers, he’s being greedy and rude to say that this place is his and no one else’s.

It’s hard to adjust to everyone; Tuesday Movie Night is suddenly replaced with monster training and inventory, Cas and Jack and Mom are gone, half the time, whisked away on hunts before Dean even has time to say hi, and Sam? Well. Sam has something to prove, something Dean doesn’t understand, and Dean can’t even have a conversation with him without something new coming up and cutting their time short.

When he goes into the kitchen it’s filled with people touching his pans, his whisks, his _stuff_ , and this possessiveness is so strange and foreign that Dean resists the urge to smack someone for using his mug because the Bunker was made for everyone, not just the Winchesters, and Dean’s being a fucking idiot to try and take the feeling of home away from them, to try and keep it all to himself. 

He’s gotten lazy, with the feeling of having something of his own, and it takes him a moment to remember that, in the end, all that’s really _his_ is Baby and the open road. 

Dean’s invited to the meetings, of course, in the War Room; they want his advice on which hunters should go where, and what they should delegate to the younger ones and what they should keep to themselves, but Dean’s never been good at that kinda shit. The only people he’s ever had to ‘manage’ when the world was ending, the only people he’s ever taken care of was him and Sam, and then Cas and Jack came and joined, and that was it, that was enough for Dean. 

So all these people? He doesn’t have a single clue what to do with them, because before he didn’t have an army against the apocalypse, he just had his family and that was enough for him. It wasn’t for Sam, though, he realizes now, ten years too late. Even when he finds a case, easy enough for him to go solo on to try and clear his head, Sam mentions that he’s sending Maggie and Riley on before Dean can tell him and it’s hard to ignore the flash of jealousy spiking through him at the fact that these people are giving Sam the praise and adoration that Dean cannot, _will_ not, and that’s what’s turning him from Dean Winchester: Brother, to just Dean Winchester: Hunter. 

Dean still sits through the meetings, though, and afterward, when he tries to get Sam on his own to talk about how sending two guys, alone, without any backup, on a hunt for a siren is a horrible idea, Sam looks at him like he just killed his dog so Dean backpedals and finds himself leaning back on tactics that he hasn’t used since he was a teenager and he was subtly trying to get Sam to sleep, to eat the last bite of cereal, to stop arguing with Dad and make life hell on everyone and to just slow the fuck down. 

He finds himself confronting Sam less and less and instead he leaves books open on tables, casual enough to anyone looking (and it’s not like Sam’s doing much of it, these days), he finds himself slipping mentions of an old memory into a conversation, something he _knows_ will make Sam remember the horror show with the kitsune and realize why he shouldn’t have Jesse, of all people, on that hunt.

He slips into old patterns of making himself scarce as possible, of looking out for Sam because someone has to, of trying to extinguish the flames of Sam’s excitement that he knows will eventually eat his brother up while Dean is forced to watch. 

He gets it, he guesses, if he tilts his eyes and squints and definitely isn’t sober. He understands the need to create something, to feel like you’re doing good in the world, especially after all their fuck-ups and all the times they accidentally jumpstarted the apocalypse and all the times people who trusted them died _because_ of them. This, though? This is only going to crash and burn, this is _not_ going to end well.

Everyone there, all the refugees who follow Sam’s word like it’s God, they haven’t seen him at his worst; they only know him as Sam Winchester: Savior of the World. They didn’t know him when he was just Sammy, they didn’t know him when he was just ‘Winchester’, when he was the prophesied ‘Boy King of Hell’ and when he was hopped up on demon blood from the last time his pride overran his instincts. They tell him he did good, and Sam believes it, he _needs_ to believe it. Dean just hopes that Sam finds a way to get it somewhere else, that this isn’t his newest addiction, the newest high he’ll be chasing after like it’s a lifeline.

When Bobby tells Sam that he’s no kind of leader, Dean privately agrees, in the corner of his mind that resents Sam for being able to leave for Stanford when Dean couldn’t, in the corner of his mind that was angry when Sam accidentally threw away Dean’s home-made EMF meter like he hadn’t been over the fucking moon when he finally perfected it, in the corner of his mind that he allowed himself to be selfish in. 

And when Mary says that Sam was born to do this? Dean wants to laugh in her face because she may be the woman who gave Sam life but she was never really his _mother_. It wasn’t her fault, of course, but she doesn’t get to appear thirty years later and claim the title like it was just waiting for her because she wasn’t one who watched Sam grow up, she wasn’t the one who changed his diapers when Dad was too busy hunting down another dead-end, she wasn’t the one who got signed co-guardian of Sam with John when Dean was 18 because that was better than Child Protective Services pounding down the door of another run-down motel. She isn’t the one who knows Sam better than she knows herself, she isn’t the one that knows that while this might be the foundation of everyone else’s lives, it’s just a way for Sam to feel like he’s doing something right, and this whole ‘one foot in’ thing is going to end in blood and tears.

Still, it isn’t his place to say anything, so he just tries to let Sam learn in the only way they know how; through accidents and mistakes and people dying for them, because of them.

Besides, Dean thinks, it’s not like Sam was ever _his_.

It’s just the first time he’s really realized it.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: slight offhand mention of someone blaming an ex-addict for their addiction
> 
> so i know this isn't really amazing, but it's been a while since ive written fic (and the first time ive written for spn, yay!!), so if you have any constructive criticism please lmk :)


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